The french doors which open onto the veranda have been open all night, and the sound of the breakers on the blackstone promenade where alternately lulling us to sleep and calling us out of it. Either the waves or the rain, which greeted us on our arrival in Pondicherry and has come in sheets and …
I feel a real sadness welling up inside of me as we leave Sri Ramanasramam. It was quite short, just a few days, but the spirit of the place and of the people was remarkable. And as is often the case when you are travelling (as opposed to tourism, where one often carries the bubble …
The experience of the sitar performance was moving — to close your eyes in that resounding space and hear the passage of melody and the underlying drone beneath, as though, like any music, you were being carried along on a river of sound. It is a great protective space, music masterfully played, even if the …
Rama, an Italian friend we have made, lived at the ashram for five years. He now lives in and runs a retreat center in Costa Rica, Montana Azul, the blue mountain, with his wife and partner Adelaida. Rama related this story of the Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: the young man came to the mountain in 1900, …
Every night at the ashram, after an evening chant and before dinner, there are fifteen minutes of music. And every night, after dinner, one or two hours. The musicians play as a devotion, an offering to the sanctuary and to those who come here as their church. The sanctuary is rather large; the floor is …
Two days into the trip and, as I previously mentioned, two years of living done. You know how to live longer? Travel, make yourself new, open up to new sights and sounds and people. You may pass away at the same second of the same minute of the same hour and day and year as …
Ok. It has been less than 48 hours here in India, but true to any real travel, an hour might be a day back home. The gift of letting yourself move into a truly foreign environment is that you have chosen to be changed. It's like diving into the surf on day with high seas… …
Manny asked: "What do you wish to gain from this travel?" I struggled for a moment to find an answer — everywhere I looked inside of my heart I could find nothing that I wished to add to my life. How often do we fall into an old habit: the search for what is missing? …
Manny says, "It's all everyone said it would be… and more." True. I am sitting in a small room the size of my bathroom at home, in front of a keyboard which has been used by too many hands, which has typed too many words, and which seems to forget every now and then how …
The traveler knows: departure is the front side of return. Those who stay behind see only the farewell; and hope for the wave hello. For those who are here, on this side of the journey, I leave our travel information. My regrets to a couple of colleagues, to whom I gave an incorrect return date. …
Typhoid 0.5cc IM. Tetanus 0.5cc IM. Hepatitis A 1cc IM. Polio 0.5cc IM. Mefloquine Hydrochloride 1/1 week. When you travel from the United States to other areas of the world, you are strongly advised to renew your boosters: a couple of days of discomfort to stave off life-threatening or life-shorting diseases endemic to your destination. …
If you haven’t been amazed at least once today, you haven’t been paying attention.